This
did mightily concern, says the historian of that prince, the
might and manhood of the kingdom, and in effect amortize a great
part of the lands to the hold and possession of the yeomanry or
middle people, who living not in a servile or indigent fashion,
were much unlinked from dependence upon their lords, and living
in a free and plentiful manner, became a more excellent infantry,
but such a one upon which the lords had so little power, that
from henceforth they may be computed to have been disarmed.
And as they had lost their infantry after this manner, so
their cavalry and commanders were cut off by the statute of
retainers; for whereas it was the custom of the nobility to have
younger brothers of good houses, mettled fellows, and such as
were knowing in the feats of arms about them, they who were
longer followed with so dangerous a train, escaped not such
punishments as made them take up.
Henceforth the country lives and great tables of the
nobility, which no longer nourished veins that would bleed for
them, were fruitless and loathsome till they changed the air, and
of princes became courtiers; where their revenues, never to have
been exhausted by beef and mutton, were found narrow, whence
followed racking of rents, and at length sale of lands, the
riddance through the statute of alienations being rendered far
more quick and facile than formerly it had been through the new
invention of entails.
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